Unexplained Toxins Haunt Puerto Rico

March 08, 1990|By Mark Kurlansky, Special to the Tribune.

MAYAGUEZ, PUERTO RICO — ``Around 1981 we started feeling something strange,`` Montserrate Cruz said. ``In August 1983 people started feeling numbness, dizziness, chest pains. Then on Dec. 12, 1984, we were working. Something smelled strange. We stood up and saw a cloud. It started green. Then turned to pink. Then gray. Then disappeared. Then women started falling on the floor.``

This is more than a recurring nightmare for Cruz and 4,800 workers in the Guanajibo-Castillo Industrial Zone in the west coast city of Mayaguez. It is a recurring assault that can not be explained. It is one of 176 such incidents in this zone documented from March 3, 1983, to Nov. 16, 1989.

The unexplained gas here is only one of numerous mysterious poisonings on the island of Puerto Rico. On the other end of the island, an entire town has been evacuated because of mysterious illnesses. In the center of the island, residents by Lake Cidra complain of strange rashes and respiratory ailments.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is finding that the island has an unusual concentration of toxic waste that will cost hundreds of millions of dollars to clean up. In the last decade, dozens of small local environmental groups have formed to call attention to strange occurrences in their areas.

These groups often do not have the scientific background to explain the phenomenon, but strange tales from angry citizens are being heard all over the island. There are repeated stories of lakes and rivers that suddenly turned bright blue. There are constant stories of people falling sick from the air, water or soil.

Not all the outbreaks are mysteries. The mercury in the soil near the central town of Juncos is by the Becton Dickinson thermometer plant. On the north coast, the Upjohn Co. has so far spent $15 million trying to clean up the 15,000 gallons of carbon tetrachloride that leaked into the water system in 1982.

The EPA already has identified nine sites for its priority list and expects in the next few years to add more. These are sites slated for cleanup at an estimated cost of $30 million each either by the industry that is responsible or by the so-called Superfund, a system whereby toxic waste-producing industries are taxed and the revenue applied to areas the EPA designates as particularly severe.

``Nine sites is quite a lot for an area the size of Puerto Rico,`` said Pedro Gelabert, director of the EPA in Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico is 3,400 square miles in area, or about one-sixteenth the size of Illinois.

The chief environmental watchdog for the Puerto Rican government, the Environmental Quality Board, submitted a list of 160 sites for Superfund. The EPA found 9 out of the first 100 were severe enough for their list of priorities. But they already have recommended to Washington another eight sites and think there will be more. ``We believe we are going to get more municipal landfills,`` Gelabert said.

Neither the EPA nor the Puerto Rican government is accusing industry of violating current anti-pollution laws. In the 1960s and `70s, when there were few prohibitions, industry dumped significant quantities of toxic waste in municipal landfills. Private industry as well as federal and Puerto Rican officials say the practice largely ended once the Recovery and Conservation Act took effect in 1980.

Sometimes the cure is as bad as the illness. Lake Cidra looks like a green meadow. People living in the residential area by the lake say they are afraid to drink water from it.

The Puerto Rican government decided to clear the lake by using a defoliant that locals and researchers at the University of Puerto Rico say is in itself highly toxic.

The gases escaping at the industrial park in Mayaguez are one of the island`s great toxic mysteries. No one denies that there are gases escaping and that the workers, 80 percent of whom are women, are getting sick. Hundreds have checked into hospitals after so-called ``gas attacks.`` In a single incident in 1985, 258 people were hospitalized.

Benito Ruiz, plant manager for Stieffel Laboratories and head of the industrial parks association said, ``Nobody can say where or how this happens, but people get sick.``

The developers originally were turned down twice for a building permit. The area on the eastern coast of Puerto Rico is near an industrial park where mercury dumping had polluted a canal.

Furthermore, 200 cows died in 1977 from grazing in the pesticide contaminated field where the town was to be located. The Environmental Quality Board had both mercury and pesticide stopped in 1978.

Then the project was approved.

Ciudad Cristiana became home to 451 families. Then complaints started emerging of miscarriages, headaches, loss of hair, loose teeth, skin rashes, learning problems in children. In 1985, the Puerto Rican government moved the entire town to new housing in a nearby area and closed down Ciudad Cristiana. The 451 families complain of continuing health problems and are suing the Puerto Rican government. But the EPA has been unable to document the cause of the health problems. They found mercury in the creek bed, but not in the fish or in the town.

``Could they have had contact with the people in Juncos?`` suggested a perplexed Gelabert. ``We know the people in Juncos have mercury poisoning.``